FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT FACEBOOK USERS - PAGE 2

By Jessica Guynn and Nathan Olivarez-Giles, Los Angeles Times and South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 27, 2011

Facebook Inc. is leaping into the fast-growing daily deals market. The popular social networking site with more than 600 million users said it had begun testing a service called Deals in five cities. The service lets users save money on discounted deals and share their shopping expeditions with friends on the site. Facebook is entering a market that has been led by Groupon Inc. and LivingSocial, which have become two of the world's fastest-growing businesses serving up coupons to consumers.

Chatroulette, a Website that allows people to do live video chats with random people, has been described as similar to flipping through television channels of real people. It's been called the next Facebook and has been written about by newspapers around the world, parodied on the Daily Show and featured on Good Morning America. ChatRoulette.com was created by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student from Moscow. He told the New York Times he enjoyed talking to friends with Skype using a microphone and webcam, but wanted to talk to more people.

Ryan and Carolina Droze will go back to socializing the old-fashioned way after an impostor stole Carolina's online photo, duplicated her Facebook account, re-invited at least 75 of her 208 Facebook friends to join the new page, and solicited them for cash. "It was embarrassing and kind of scary that someone was pretending to be me and I did not even know it," Carolina Droze said. Her husband, Ryan Droze, said, "It creeped me out. I thought social networking was so important.

Facebook introduced a new look for users' home pages Wednesday to better display friend updates in real time. One of the social-networking site's popular features is the News Feed, a constantly updating catalog of what a member's friends have been doing on the site. These activities could include posting photos, commenting on news stories or updating a status field that appears at the top of the page. The News Feed is current but not real time. Now posts from friends will appear immediately and members can filter for the updates they'd like to see. Facebook also has modified the profile pages of public figures and organizations so they can provide updates in the same way as individuals.

The password-protected pages of Facebook carry some of society's best-kept secrets, but a recent Broward County case shows that sometimes, Facebook tells all. In some ways, the social networking leviathan was the key witness in the case of the Broward Sheriff's Office versus Mason Chibnick, an eight-year jail deputy. Facebook's cooperation got the deputy arrested for perjury, accused of lying to his bosses about contacting a former inmate. "I always thought u were so cute," reads one of his many Facebook messages sent to the Wilton Manors woman, which are now in BSO's investigative file.

Facebook is shutting down its much-maligned Beacon marketing program, launched nearly two years ago amid fanfare only to generate a storm of privacy complaints over tracking of user activities at partner Web sites. The social site agreed to end Beacon and create a foundation to promote online privacy, safety and security as part of a $9.5 million settlement in a lawsuit over the program. A federal judge in San Jose, Calif., still must approve the terms. It tracked purchases Facebook users made on other sites and sent alerts about them to their Facebook friends.

A flawed Facebook feature accidentally allowed Facebook users to temporarily peek at friends' private instant messages and pending friends lists. The bug was outed yesterday by TechCrunch.com. The hours-long mishap apparently occurred during a software update Wednesday on the Facebook site ÃÂ which now claims a mind-bending 400 million members. The company reports: "Someone would have to go through multiple steps to see anything--log-in, go to their privacy settings, use the preview tool, type in a friends name."

South Florida Facebook users may receive a false message warning of new membership fees - unless you share the message with friends right away. Do not share. Facebook is not charging membership fees. Not sure what the gain here is for the scam-ster except to waste users' time. The way it works: You receive a message on your account that claims Facebook is moving to a “price grid” costing up to $9.99 per month for a “Gold” membership. The faux message urges users to copy and paste the message and share with friends before midnight, claiming doing so will stop you from having to pay for membership.

The latest virus threat aimed at Facebook users is capable of stealing personal passwords, including banking log-in information. The virus comes via a spam email alert falsely stating your Facebook account password has been reset. At least some of the emails have these words in the subject line (but expect variations): Facebook password reset confirmation customer support. Do not open such an email because once you do it will begin downloading malware including the password-stealing virus.